A couple of weeks ago my daughter got knocked off her bike by a car. Fortunately she was more shocked than physically hurt but her bike was damaged and as it's her main form of transport, I bought her a new one from a bike shop which she collected last weekend. Unfortunately, it wasn't properly set up and I had to drive up to her place and sort it out for her. I'm not the greatest bike mechanic but at least it was rideable when I'd finished and I'd more or less sorted out the gears.

He wrote a disparaging piece in the Sunday Times (Murdoch's flagship) about transgender people which Stonewall are making a meal of. Personally, I think I'd rather listen to my cat squawk than that big galoot, who has offended me at least twice in decrying cyclists and now people with gender dysphoria. That's been sorted but now I have Clarksonalgia - I think he's a total pain.

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jan/25/jeremy-clarkson...

One of the best British actors has lost his fight with cancer aged 69. He got a BAFTA for his Sheriff of Nottingham against Kevin Costner's Robin Hood, where acted the American off the screen. Most of you will know him as Professor Snape from the Harry Potter films, where he played a brooding dark character to perfection. My own favourite was Truly, madly Deeply, with Juliet Stevenson, which was where I first saw him and fancied him like mad.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truly,_Madly,_Deeply

This film by all accounts is very good, with Eddie Redmayne doing us all proud as he plays Lili Elbe in the film of the best selling book. Hopefully, it will help the general public to understand those of us who were wrongly gendered at birth. However, no matter how good it is, I won't be going to see it.

It's too close to home, too painful for me to even glance at. The trailers make me want to wince, not because it's so awful but because it reflects too clearly part of me, or how I used to be. I just cannot watch it.

Mya Taylor, star of the iPhone shot movie Tangerine is being promoted as a potential Oscar nominee.

http://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/dec/21/mya-taylor-tra...

2015 certainly seems to have been the year of the 'Trans Celebrity'. Ironic, seeing as most of us would rather fade into the background.

From the Guardian, some have happier stories to tell than others.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2015/dec/15/...

Holly Woodlawn has died aged 69. She was the subject of Lou Reed's Walk on the Wildside. I recall seeing her years ago in one of his films and can't say I remember much about it, but then avant-garde, is not a term I'd use to describe myself.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/dec/07/holly-woodlawn-...

The latest Tom Hanks film, is a cracker. Set in the cold war period of 1957/8 it features the background of the negotiations to exchange Francis Gary Powers a downed U2 pilot and student Frederic Pryor for a Russian spy Col Rudolf Abel who was caught by the US while acting as a dead letter intermediary.

Pity about the voice, but according to the blurb Cpt Hannah Winterbourne is the highest ranking, serving officer in the British Army who just happens to be transgender.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34966216

The army has come a long way.

From BBC3 looks like some of it at least is filmed in the US. Some young transwomen strut their stuff on the beach and so on. Why do they all have such deep voices?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p038dwjj

It seems the British legal system while on one hand protective of transgender people shoots itself in the foot by two recent cases of people who've lived their entire adult lives as female being sent to male prisons because they hadn't reregistered as legally female. In the first case a voluble protest by activists caused the woman to be sent to a female prison, in the second it turned to tragedy and the woman concerned seems to have carried out her threat and taken her own life. I suspect guidelines might change now that it's too late for poor Vicky Thompson.

I love short stories, reading them and writing them. They have a very varied spectrum in terms of type and genre, as much as any other form of writing or story. They might describe an entire event, or the impact on just one individual. They can reflect just a moment in time from a lifetime of events, which is my favourite sort to write. They don't have a build up just an event, or an encounter and they're over - gone; leaving us to work out what happened before and after, which may or may not be what the writer intended.

James and I saved the world again from the nasty people who do nasty things to other folk. Well he did most of the saving, I was watching his back, then in gratitude he runs off with a younger woman at the end of it! Honestly, men!

The stunts are amazing, everything is over the top, so I can recommend it and it has the lovely Daniel Craig - what more could you want? Just some popcorn or sweeties...

Oh yeah, no time to write Bike - I knew there was something else...

Sorry folks real life interrupted my writing time tonight, hopefully will do better tomorrow.

Angharad & the team.

I suspect I may have been wished an interesting life as very little runs smoothly. I'm still having awful broadband problems (0.2mbs current speed) despite changing supplier - I suspect they're all as useless as each other.